Help / Animated AVIF

What is AVIF? How to Create Animated AVIF Images

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AVIF (AV1 Image File Format) is a modern image format based on the AV1 video codec. It was finalized in 2019 by the Alliance for Open Media — an industry group that includes Google, Apple, Mozilla, Microsoft, Netflix, and others. The format is royalty-free and open source.

AVIF supports both still images and image sequences (animation), making it a powerful alternative to GIF, APNG, and WebP for animated content on the web.

Since it's based on video codec, it's an excellent choice for creating animated content on the web, beating all other popular animated image formats in terms of file size and quality.

Advantages of AVIF

  • Excellent compression – AVIF typically produces files that are 50–90% smaller than equivalent GIFs, and 20–50% smaller than WebP, while retaining comparable or better visual quality.
  • Full color support – supports 24-bit color (16.7 million colors) and high dynamic range (HDR) with up to 12-bit depth, unlike GIF's 256-color limitation.
  • Alpha transparency – provides a full 8-bit alpha channel for smooth, partial transparency — far superior to GIF's binary (on/off) transparency.
  • Lossy and lossless – choose between lossy compression for smallest file sizes or lossless compression for pixel-perfect quality.
  • Royalty-free – no licensing fees or patent concerns, unlike some competing formats.

Browser Support

As of 2026, AVIF is supported by all major web browsers:

  • Chrome – full support since version 85 (still) and 93 (animated)
  • Firefox – full support since version 113 (animated since version 114)
  • Safari – support since version 16.4 (still) and 17.0 (animated)
  • Edge – full support (based on Chromium)
  • Opera – full support (based on Chromium)

Up-to-date browser support: caniuse.com/avif.

This means AVIF images can now be used on websites with confidence that the vast majority of visitors will be able to view them. Internet Explorer and some older mobile browsers remain the only notable exceptions.

If this animation works for you, your browser supports animated AVIF: Animated AVIF demo - butterfly AVIF image, 87.4 KB, 67 frames
(same animation as GIF – 781 KB at worse quality)

How to Create Animated AVIF

Ezgif offers several ways to create animated AVIF images, depending on your source material:

A) Create animated AVIF from individual images

Use our animated AVIF maker to upload multiple PNG, JPG, WebP, or other image files and assemble them into an animated AVIF. You can choose the frame order, duration, and transition effects.

This is the best method when you have individual frames or a series of photos you want to animate, offering full control over timing and quality settings.

B) Convert video to animated AVIF

Our Video to AVIF converter lets you upload MP4, WebM, AVI, MOV, and other video files and convert them (or a selected portion) to animated AVIF. You can set the frame rate, quality, size, and start/end times.

AVIF is an especially good choice for video-to-animation conversion because its AV1-based compression handles complex, photographic content much more efficiently than GIF or WebP, resulting in significantly smaller files.

C) Convert GIF to AVIF

The easiest way to get an animated AVIF is to convert an existing GIF. Simply upload your GIF file and click "Convert." The resulting AVIF file will typically be much smaller than the original GIF.

Note that converting from GIF will not improve the color quality beyond what the original GIF contained (since GIF is limited to 256 colors), but the file size savings can be substantial.

D) Convert from other animated formats

You can also create animated AVIF by converting from other animated image formats:

Converting AVIF to Other Formats

If you need to convert an AVIF file to a different format for compatibility reasons, ezgif offers the following converters:

Bulk converters are also available for AVIF to JPG and AVIF to PNG batch conversion.

Editing Animated AVIF

Most of the editing tools on ezgif work with animated AVIF files. You can resize, crop, rotate, change speed, reverse, split into frames, cut/trim, add text, apply effects, and optimize your animated AVIF images online, just like you would with GIF files.